I’ll take congressional staffers for $200, Alex

There’s still time to get to be bestest pals with Christian Haines, a special assistant to Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.). That way, if he wins on “Jeopardy!” again tonight, just maybe he’ll invite you to celebrate with him.

There’s still time to get to be bestest pals with Christian Haines, a special assistant to Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.). That way, if he wins on “Jeopardy!” again tonight, just maybe he’ll invite you to celebrate with him.

Haines has won four games of the popular quiz-show game, and tonight he’s going for win number five. The games were taped earlier, and he’s told us how tonight’s ends — but we’re not writing any spoilers here.

The 27-year-old Newport News, Va., native began as a high-school intern for Scott and has worked in Scott’s Hill office as well as his Newport News district office. He says he first got the idea to try out for the show while watching it with some Scott staffers during late evenings at work.

And although he had some fast-buzzer experience from his high school days on the academic challenge team, he says nothing can prepare you for the show. “You can feel really confident, but when you add the lights and crowd and Alex Trebek talking to you, it gets a little more complicated,” he says.

Haines thinks he amused “Jeopardy!” staffers during his May audition by promising that if he were selected to be on the show and won, he would give 10 percent of his winnings to his church, save 50 and blow 40. “And that’s about what I’ll do,” he says.

He plans to use some of his winnings to help him as he leaves the Hill to finish up his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth. But he hopes to be back after graduation.

One reason to come back is to help shape policy in the new Democratic majority. Haines said he suggested a tax break for game-show winners to Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) who just happens to be on the Ways and Means Committee, when Levin stopped by the Scott office’s “Jeopardy!”-watching party last Thursday. “We’ll see,” Haines says, not sounding too optimistic.

 
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“It was so bad that for 10 minutes afterwards I thought I was a liberal,” Lowry wrote us in an e-mail. “But I’m feeling much better now.”

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